Apple Watch able to detect abnormal heart rate with up to 97% accuracy

According to a recent study, it was found that the Apple Watch was able to detect abnormal heart rate or atrial fibrillation with an accuracy of up to 97%.

Atrial fibrillation is characterized by irregular or rapid heart beating. Most episodes may have no symptoms, but it is associated with higher risks of heart disease, heart failure, and dementia.

They found that when paired with an algorithm to sort through the collected heart rate data, they were able to detect atrial fibrillation with 98.04% sensitivity and 90.2% specificity.

The study was conducted by the University of California and the team behind the Cardiogram app. There were 6,158 participants in total and all had normal EKG readings. However, the tests found that 200 of them suffered from paroxysmal atrial fibrillation.

Cardiogram will now work on refining its algorithms before using it to start notifying users of atrial fibrillation. Specifically, the company needs to work on further testing to ensure the data it collect is reliable so as to provide accurate diagnosis.